Vietnam's transport minister has asked the Ministry of Public Security to adjust several by-law documents to force future car owners to prove they have a proper place to park.

Minister Dinh La Thang said that one of the factors causing severe traffic congestion in large cities in Vietnam, typically Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, is the increase in individual cars, many of which have been parked illegally on city sidewalks or roadways.

Figures from Hanoi Car Parking Lot Development Co. showed that the city has around 43 hectares of legal parking spaces, only enough for 8 to 10 percent of demand. Thus, the rest of the cars resort to parking on sidewalks and roadways.

There are 450,000 cars in Hanoi, with around 5,000 new cars registered every month.

Nguyen Manh Hung, chairman of the Vietnam Automobile Transportation Department, said the request that people prove they have a legal parking space before registering a car is not new. The practice was suggested before in 2003-2004 but not strictly followed and then abolished. The policy caused complicated problems, such as the car owners paying parking lot businesses to create fake contracts, he said.

Thang said the Ministry of Public Security should have measures to check parking contract signing and punish fraudsters.

Yet Tran The Quan from the public security ministry said it was difficult to carry out the regulation in 2004, and it would be much more difficult to enforce it now because the number of individual cars has greatly increased.

In September, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City authorities were asked by the Transport Ministry to clear all parking lots on their roadways. But no results have been seen.